In November, behind the scenes, there was an important change at the Institute. Bruce Tate, the Manager of British History Online, left the project after 11 years. You may know that this summer BHO celebrated 10 years of operation, from which you will see that Bruce was here before the site itself, developing the technical architecture of BHO from scratch.

Other people did play important roles in BHO as it grew larger and more complex, particularly our former colleague Peter Webster, who was Editorial Controller from 2005 until 2012 and contributed a great deal. But Bruce’s work ensured that BHO developed as a robust site, able to sustain the millions of monthly pageviews it went on to attract. Since BHO also has subscribers (only £30 a year, if you’d like to sign up) it is also essential that the site is always available whenever people need to use it. Bruce’s meticulous approach to project planning and technical implementation have made that possible. It’s a tribute to Bruce’s capabilities that the rest of us never worried about whether BHO had gone offline or crashed, because it never did.

Bruce’s main character flaw is that he is a season ticket holder at Chelsea. Chelsea have had 10 managers in the time that BHO has had one, proving once again that short-termism achieves little. We plan to build on the excellent work Bruce has done by updating and improving the site over the next 10 years; we thank him for his sterling contribution and wish him well for the future.